[GripS]

Here i am again. I am at a loss at what i'm doing wrong.

For a while now i have been running ubuntu on my secondary sata drive. I decided at the advice of my Linux freak co-worker to give fedora core 5 a shot. It installs fine but grub does not fire up when booting up my machine. Therefore i can't access the fedora install. I have tried going into the advanced boot loader configuration with no dice. I have tried using the linux rescue option. Dropping to a command prompt and running 'chroot /mnt/sysimage'. Says the command isn't found. I can't understand why Ubuntu has no problems with my configuration yet Fedora does.

My configuration is as follows. SDA has my windows install with a seperate partition for games. SDA 1 has a partition for storage and 20 gigs of free space. I am installing on the 20 gigs of free space.

Can someone please shed some light on this? How can i get the grub bootloader to work with this configuration?

I found this thread: http://www.linuxcompatible.org/dual_...A2_t34964.html

and have tried what was suggested but still no dice.

[prunejuice]

If it's not a big deal, just re-install FC5. Anything could have gone wrong.

If you're confident, you can just add the FC5 kernel you want to boot while you're in Ubuntu. For example, when you're installing FC5, during the installation if you're asked if you want to add a bootloader, just decline. Then when you're back in Ubuntu, just add the FC5 option there. It should be in /boot/grub.

[GripS]

No dice in re-installing FC5. Set the bootloader to install on SDA1 (primary hard drive which has the MBR with windows on it). Still won't load grub.

Can anyone who has successfully installed FC5 in a dual boot scenerio using 2 sata drives in a non-raid configuration please give me a step by step on getting this to work? My current config: SDA1 Windows SDA2 Games. SDB 1 storage SDB 2 unallocated for a linux install. Primary is hooked up to 1st SATA port. Secondary hooked up to 2nd SATA port. I read the Fedora Core install guide when using 2 hard drives but none of the scenerios outlined seem to coincide with my configuration. Installing Ubuntu was a breeze(I guess thats why a lot of people opt for it). This has been a confidence killer to say the least. I'm guessing all i really need is the proper grub install configuration as the install seems to complete ok, just grub won't load.

I guess the saying that "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" is coming into play in my case. Except my time isn't worthless and i have very little 'free time' as it is.

Thanks for the help prunejuice. Either i'm a moron or Fedora doesn't like me. I'm guessing that i'm just a moron at this point.

[prunejuice]

Okay, if you're not getting the GRUB menu, what are you getting?

Now, this might sound like it's too involved, but would you consider getting yourself a copy of Ultimate Boot CD?

UBCD has some great boot mangers that I've used before to get into corrupted installs. At the very least, you'll have an awesome utilites CD that you can use for many other purposes.

The whole point of using UBCD would be to allow you to get into your FC5 installation, so that you repair/remake GRUB from there.

[GripS]

Hehe. I'm getting nothing. I never thought i would be so ticked off to see windows booting as normally that's a good thing. However many Linux masters may dissagree .

So Basically even though i specified for the boot loader to be installed on SDA1 it still won't load grub.

Downloading the ultimate boot CD now. We'll see how that goes. Assuming it allows me to boot into fedora core 5 what would you suggest i do from there. I'm thinking from what i've read up on i will be doing this from a command prompt:

1. chroot /mnt/sysimage
2. grub-install /dev/sda

Well... The download is done. Lets see how this goes. Thanks for sticking with me on this prunejuice.

[GripS]

Woooohoooo! Here i am in my new FC5 install. The Ultimate boot disk did the trick. An excellent recommendation and LOTS of handy tools in there. I ended up using super grub after several attempts at booting using the other methods. Failed every time. Then i came accross the 'recover grub' entry. Gave it a shot. Failed. Then i was greeted with the option of grub auto-install. After several failed attempts gone by(rather quickly), I saw 'succeeded'... smiled and rebooted. There was the beloved Grub menu asking me which OS i wanted to boot.

Prunejuice. Your awesome. I was about to throw the towel in for the evening, but you came through for me. Many thanks. (Whoever woulda thought i would be so excited about GRUB??)

[prunejuice]

I'm glad it worked out.

Have you repaired GRUB while in FC5?

It's always nice to help out a fellow Linux enthusiast. I was in the same position three
years ago when I was ready to throw in the towel after a frustrating Morphix experience. Don't believe what you hear about some Linux users, that they're too quick to tell people to "RTFM".

[GripS]

Actually i didn't have to repair grub. Seems like the super grub option corrected where it was installed. Looked like what it did was automatically scan all areas for the grub install and put it in the right place. It was a pretty fast process so I wasn't able to follow everything it was doing.

As far as RTFM. The problem is that i did. I did over and over and over again but still could not get it to boot from grub. Seems like Fedora's install procedure needs to be a little more noob friendly like Ubuntu's is. As I even re-installed it to see where it was installing grub and i followed the same procedure during the FC5 install with no luck. So i'm still at a loss as what it is i was doing wrong. I'm a little dissapointed that VLC media player(the mother of all media players IMO) stops at FC3. What's up with that??? Anyway. Thanks again. I have a bit of work to do to get things the way i want it.